Today would have been the 69th birthday of Nesta Robert Marley, better known to the masses as Bob Marley, who is a figurehead and immortal iconic image to not only the sounds and sights of Reggae music, which he helped pioneer and make more accessible to the planet, but also as a metaphoric, literal, approachable, and tangible symbol of hope and peace, of positive energy, of having one reach into one’s self and soul and try to pull out all the greatness that one can muster up, with his music and timeless messages.
He wasn’t the first artist to make Reggae music for sure, as there were scores upon scores of artists in his native homeland of Jamaica and beyond those nether regions who also preached and taught the tenets of its colorful bass heavy, hi-hat laden, tick-tock guitar arrangements, infusing a kind of color chart mixture of religion, faith, spirituality, and opinions on the politic of the local, national, global, and universal lands. But Bob Marley became the most well-known artist to come from that place, and the most successful in teaching and preaching it, but most importantly and crucially, never soapboxing or doing it in a holier-than-thou stance, of the messages of peace and love, which in his capable hands, made it rise from the banality of pretentiousness and obviousness on its intrinsic levels to an all-together communal atmosphere which brought him and the listener to a transcendent plane.
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